Around the World with Zorro

Zorro was really good. Good like an excellent cheese burger, really hot, really fresh, not perhaps all that nutritious, but oh so delicious. They really wrote/played it for laughs, but also as a real swashbuckler. The lead was remarkable, not the typical casting, very slight and elegant which was good for Don Diego, but he managed to be so adept with the sword and with movement generaly that he came across as super hero-like as Z. And this was hands down the best fight choreography I have ever seen. Which is something because the theatre only holds about 65 seats and I was in the second row.

Downside to this production: I liked it because of the superhero component. My serious theater friends were not impressed. They found it amateurish. While I think that is a bit harsh, I suspect the treatement more than the production itself lends credence to this criticism.

I was trying to think of why I thought the adaptation was so strong and I think it was because it captured a longing for passion. Passion of romance, passion to do things in aid of justice, passion for life. Again pointing to black and white, heroes, man and superman. In a world of money grubbing and daily compromise, wouldn't it be nice to be a hero?

In some ways it was an opposite treatment from Around the World in 80 Days. That show also captured my heart. 80 Days is about curiosity, says the adaptor/director. And I think she has a point. Fogg is so stuck in his life and so attached to his routine. And then he takes off on a trip around the world with only the thought to make the finish line. And yet he unthaws in the process, not so much because of what he (doesn't truly) see(s), but because of the people who join him and the awakening in him that lets in love for a woman.

Does Fogg become a hero? Perhaps not truly, but he awakens to his own heroic potential in the style of Joseph Campbell. Live your life as heroically as possible for optimum fulfillment.